Nice article, but it doesn't even start to scratch the subject, that would take a book. Rage comics are really a new means of expression, they democratize cartoons, allowing people who can't draw (or barely can) make comics that are often as good as the pros'. Even for artists, rage is often a cool new style, check this (a kind of meta-joke with the rage language itself): http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Mediev ... 895239.jpg

Back to the "common" rages, it's worth notice that most successful faces are very well drawn even if the style is rough: they are done by people who actually can draw, but they make a quick sketch with the worst possible means (like a mouse and MS Paint) to obtain the amateurish effect.

As humor, my favorite part of rage is the absence of political-correct constraints. There are many rages that a pro comedian (or even most non-anonymous poster) would never dare to publish. For example, this comic is of dubious taste in two accounts -- associating Islam with terrorism, and mocking the tragedy of 9/11 - but you can't deny how fun it is: http://img.anongallery.org/img/7/4/alla ... p-rage.jpg

And o=no discussion of rages is complete without mentioning the popularity of eschatological comics, which are not always just infantile potty-mouth jokes. This one is pure genius, showing also a very "creative" use of a standard rage face (a composite face, the "lol-gusta"): http://i.imgur.com/cyudo.jpg

I can't see these replacing smileys any time soon. I can type a smiley easily. If I want to use one of these, either my mail program has to support them or I have to insert a pic of them. Either way means smileys are easier to use.

Nice article, but it doesn't even start to scratch te subject, that would take a book. Rage comics are really a new means of expression, they democratize cartoons, allowing people who can't draw (or barely can) make comics that are often as good as the pros'. Even for artists, rage is often a cool new style, check this (a kind of meta-joke with the rage language itself):

Back to the "common" rages, it's worth notice that most successful faces are very well drawn even if the style is rough: they are done by people who actually can draw, but they make a quick sketch with the worst possible means (like a mouse and MS Paint) to obtain the amateurish effect.

As humor, my favorite part of rage is the absence of political-correct constraints. There are many rages that a pro comedian (or even most non-anonymous poster) would never dare to publish. For example, this comic is of dubious taste in two accounts -- associating Islam with terrorism, and mocking the tragedy of 9/11 - but you can't deny how fun it is:

And o=no discussion of rages is complete without mentioning the popularity of eschatological comics, which are not always just infantile potty-mouth jokes. This one is pure genius, showing also a very "creative" use of a standard rage face (a composite face, the "lol-gusta"):

I would agree. But it makes me kind of sad because those things are really not very original. They are pretty much the "Brittany Spears" or "Justin Bieber" of comics. You don't like Brittany Spears or Justin Bieber because they are good or have any kind of talent. You like them because they are safe and everybody else likes them. Everybody else (by which I mean the small fraction of people in the world the enhabit reddit) likes rage comics, so they must be funny right? After all, reddit is so full of smartness.... cough.

I would agree. But it makes me kind of sad because those things are really not very original. They are pretty much the "Brittany Spears" or "Justin Bieber" of comics. You don't like Brittany Spears or Justin Bieber because they are good or have any kind of talent. You like them because they are safe and everybody else likes them. Everybody else (by which I mean the small fraction of people in the world the enhabit reddit) likes rage comics, so they must be funny right? After all, reddit is so full of smartness.... cough.

Man are there some tight ass individuals posting around here. Who the fuck cares I you like them or not? Are certainly doesn't, and for food measure, whether you like it or not these rage faces are here and guess what some of them are actually funny. Heh, now a days my brother and I use them all the time. Like the Yao Ming face. He says something and m response is Bitch Please, or we say me gusta when we see something we, well, like. As a previous poster said: lighten the fuck up.

I just clicked on a link from dlux without thinking - as it loaded in the background I worried about goat.se

Then I realized that goat.se has purged from the greater internets. It's our polio people! We won this one.

<nerd style="um, actually">It was "goatse.cx". And your error only goes to illustrate your point. Good show!</nerd>

With that out of the way, I'm astounded to see so many people hating on this article so much. I put up with hundreds of Apple/Microsoft news stories every week and the ONE TIME Ars publishes something I actually care about, people come down on it like a ton of bricks?

I would agree. But it makes me kind of sad because those things are really not very original. They are pretty much the "Brittany Spears" or "Justin Bieber" of comics. You don't like Brittany Spears or Justin Bieber because they are good or have any kind of talent. You like them because they are safe and everybody else likes them. Everybody else (by which I mean the small fraction of people in the world the enhabit reddit) likes rage comics, so they must be funny right? After all, reddit is so full of smartness.... cough.

Well there's no question that tons of rage comics are worthless; one certainly has to wade through tons of chaff to find the minority of gems. When I have some time for this, I usually go to r/f7u12 and filter by top scoring for last week or month... still not a perfect filter, but saves me from most work. Not to mention that many professional, highly successful comics have the same problem, as the author eventually runs out of great ideas and spends the next half century milking a success formula (Garfield anyone?)... these days the single pro comic that has a very high hit ratio for me is xkcd (and improving, which is amazing).

As humor, my favorite part of rage is the absence of political-correct constraints. There are many rages that a pro comedian (or even most non-anonymous poster) would never dare to publish. For example, this comic is of dubious taste in two accounts -- associating Islam with terrorism, and mocking the tragedy of 9/11 - but you can't deny how fun it is: http://img.anongallery.org/img/7/4/alla ... p-rage.jpg

I deny that it is funny.

What is labelled "politically correct" is the hard-fought, and still vulnerable, principle, that you should not participate in assaults upon the dignity of people who are the victims of oppression, or otherwise are not members of the dominant power group. In other words, if you complain about the "politically correct", you are almost certainly a bigot. People who aren't bigots don't find bigotry funny, so the appeals to the supreme moral right to humor wouldn't be persuasive, even if it had any basis.

And what makes me most uncomfortable about a lot of the stuff I see coming out of 4chan, and a lot of related pop culture artifacts these days, is that mixed in with material that I find funny, and the occasional social criticism I appreciate, such as the one by black_andon21 shown in the article, is that there's a lot of bigotry showing up in the mix, and it usually goes uncriticised.

I just clicked on a link from dlux without thinking - as it loaded in the background I worried about goat.se.

I already learned my lesson by linking directly to the "awesome cougars" guy (you're on your own on that one) with a one-week ban, so I'm not about to post goatse images or links.

(But in some of the threads here it certainly would have come in handy after dredging through seven or eight pages of circuitous fact-free bullshit, if only as a postscript when signing off. It would be a bit more of a flourish than a 'rage face'.)

So let me get this straight. People are complaining about the use of these memes based on the argument that it facilitates poor content/indicates an unoriginal mind? From an evolutionary point of view I find this logic flawed. Consider: What are words?

Of course there are differences in time scale but to not see the forest for the trees...see what I did there?(hint: It's a perfect example of what I just mentioned)

While I don't think you should be SRSBSNS all the time, and indeed enjoyed the laptop hammock and John Carter of Mars articles, I can't help but see this article as way off-topic for you. I did not enjoy it.

Pray write no articles on the evolution of NyanCat or the growing popularity of My Little Pony.

Man are there some tight ass individuals posting around here. Who the fuck cares I you like them or not? Are certainly doesn't, and for food measure, whether you like it or not these rage faces are here and guess what some of them are actually funny. Heh, now a days my brother and I use them all the time. Like the Yao Ming face. He says something and m response is Bitch Please, or we say me gusta when we see something we, well, like. As a previous poster said: lighten the fuck up.

Bunch of uptight assholes. Jeez.

:trollface:

spookthesunset wrote:

tsudo wrote:

I love these meme-ish cartoon faces... This is the progression of culture (whether you like it or not)...

Justin Bieber is the progression of culture too. So is Applebee's and The Olive Garden. People love things that everybody else loves.

To those getting offended that Ars, a mighty bellwether of tech journalism, has run such a lowbrow article on rage faces that is so beneath you to dignify, let me say this: pull the corn cobs out of your asses and get yourselves a sense of humor.

I just clicked on a link from dlux without thinking - as it loaded in the background I worried about goat.se

Then I realized that goat.se has purged from the greater internets. It's our polio people! We won this one.

The original has always been, and will always be, goatse.cx. You're going to have to type that in yourself since I'm not going to link it. That said, it does look like the nasty shock image associated with that name is not there anymore. [rageface.gif]

I don't like rage face comics. It's not the art styles used, I actually find the style somewhat interesting and have ever since I was first exposed to it during the early 70's.

I dislike the fact that if you say you don't like them, a bunch of trolls crawl out of the woodwork and accuse you of having "no sense of humor" or telling you to "lighten up". Hint- most of them aren't created with humor in mind, it's just somebody's own little pet peeve or personal rant about some subject nobody else really cares about... and they're only using the rage faces because it's "trendy" or "cool".

Or to put it another way, it's not the style which bothers me, it's the content... or more accurately the utter lack of any worthwhile content. If you make a webcomic using only stick figures, and it has nothing worthwhile in the content, nobody pays attention. But take that exact same comic, and replace the stick figures with Rage Faces, and suddenly every meme-whore on the planet is reposting it and flaming anybody who dares to have a different opinion.

Memes are funny when they are short-lived. Then the desperate and socially clueless get ahold of the meme, and run it into the ground... and that is the point where the Rage Face meme is today.

"The faces don't really 'belong' to anybody, especially not the corporations," Awesome said. "Not everybody is aware of this almost unspoken ideology.

The troll face is under copyright (since 2008) - and that copyright has been used as a stick against corporations (but not against individual users).

Osvaldo Doederlein wrote:

Nice article, but it doesn't even start to scratch the subject, that would take a book. Rage comics are really a new means of expression, they democratize cartoons, allowing people who can't draw (or barely can) make comics that are often as good as the pros

If "pro" means "editorial cartoons" and syndicated crud, then it's not difficult to make something better.

I'm not a big fan of most of the rage face cartoons (although a few posted here have been good. Ars makes a good filter), but I did enjoy the article. I too am shocked by the amount of hate here. I find internet culture/memes fascinating, even though I don't participate in too many of them. I'm particularly interested in the way memes can be language independant, and allow the communication of relatively complex ideas with minimal time and effort.

So while it seems that more articles on these lines wouldn't be too popular, at least on the front page, I'd be happy for Ars to populate a "Culture" section with regular articles about the latest and greatest culture on the net, and where it came from.

I really dislike the rage face meme too. Partly it's because they're simply ugly, and partly because some people seem to think that simply posting a rage face == thread over. In that context it's trolling, pure and simple.

I'm not a big fan of most of the rage face cartoons (although a few posted here have been good. Ars makes a good filter), but I did enjoy the article. I too am shocked by the amount of hate here. I find internet culture/memes fascinating, even though I don't participate in too many of them. I'm particularly interested in the way memes can be language independent, and allow the communication of relatively complex ideas with minimal time and effort.

So while it seems that more articles on these lines wouldn't be too popular, at least on the front page, I'd be happy for Ars to populate a "Culture" section with regular articles about the latest and greatest culture on the net, and where it came from.

I entirely agree with you. But if you think that a separate section will stop the hate, just look at the comments in the Apple section. ;-)

Having said that, I do think the hate comments are very enjoyable to read. This must be what trolls feel like...